Off to a roaring start on the novel this morning - got up, made tea and a muffin, and was writing a few minutes after six. It would have been easier this morning if I had been able to get to sleep last night of course. The only slightly alarming thing is that I am going to have to continue to get up at that time for the entire endeavour, I think.

First session was 2155 words. Cool. It's a little bit slower than I had hoped, with about 1200 words per hour rather than the 1800 I did in the test text last week, but I needed to stop because of time rather than losing momentum which is encouraging.

And I can tell where I will need to do major rewrites in the second draft already.

Here's my opening line, which I've actually had since the very beginning:

This is the story of a man, a man who never wanted to end.

I will quite merrily send copies of the completed manuscript to interested parties for critical feedback, but I won't be doing that until after the second draft, which is likely to be in January. I'm taking Stephen King's advice here, since he writes in "On Writing" about leaving your manuscript untouched for six weeks once the first draft has been completed so you can come back to it fresh. That sounds eminently sensible to me.

Update: I added some more words over lunch and at the dentist, so my total for the day is now 3042. w00t!

Posted by Dunx at November 1, 2004 08:40 AM